• Stand on the windswept beach at Kitty Hawk and see where the Wright brothers made the first powered flight off Kill Devil Hills in 1903. The event is commemorated at the Wright Brothers Memorial (website: www.nps.gov/wrbr) at Kitty Hawk.

• View the attractions along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore (website: www.nps.gov/caha) including the Outer Banks ponies, Bodie Island, and the candy-striped Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, the nation's tallest and most famous.

• Tour the restored New Bern's Tryon Palace (website: www.tryonpalace.org), built in the 1760s as the first permanent capital and home for the Royal Governor of North Carolina.

• Visit New Bern's Fireman's Museum (website: www.newbernmuseums.com), formed by the two oldest continuously operated fire companies in the USA. Included in the exhibits is ‘Fire Horse Fred', who pulled the fire-hose wagon for 17 years. He died in 1925 while pulling the fire wagon to a false alarm.

• Across the river from Wilmington's Cotton Exchange, tour the USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial (website: www.battleshipnc.com), and walk the decks of this famous WWII battleship. Her story is told on summer nights in ‘The Immortal Showboat', a spectacular sound and light show.

• View the works by Botticelli, Monet, Raphael and Rubens at the North Carolina Museum of Art (website: www.ncartmuseum.org) in Raleigh.

• Visit Durham, known as ‘The City of Medicine'. The city is home to the world-famous Research Triangle Park, where over 150 research and development facilities are based (website: www.rtp.org), and Duke University (website: www.duke.edu) with its lovely chapel and gardens.

• Journey through the Morehead Planetarium (website: www.moreheadplanetarium.org) in Raleigh where more than 100 of the USA's astronauts trained before venturing into space.

See Contact Addresses for further tourist information.